"Airline pilots were once the heroes of the skies. Today, in the quest for safety, airplanes are meant to largely fly themselves. Which is why the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447, which killed 228 people, remains so perplexing and significant. William Langewiesche explores how a series of small errors turned a state-of-the-art cockpit into a death trap."

And the final summation:

"It seems that we are locked into a spiral in which poor human performance begets automation, which worsens human performance, which begets increasing automation. The pattern is common to our time but is acute in aviation. Air France 447 was a case in point. In the aftermath of the accident, the pitot tubes were replaced on several Airbus models; Air France commissioned an independent safety review that highlighted the arrogance of some of the company’s pilots and suggested reforms; a number of experts called for angle-of-attack indicators in airliners, while others urged a new emphasis on high-altitude-stall training, upset recoveries, unusual attitudes, flying in Alternate Law, and basic aeronautical common sense. All of this was fine, but none of it will make much difference. At a time when accidents are extremely rare, each one becomes a one-off event, unlikely to be repeated in detail. Next time it will be some other airline, some other culture, and some other failure—but it will almost certainly involve automation and will perplex us when it occurs. Over time the automation will expand to handle in-flight failures and emergencies, and as the safety record improves, pilots will gradually be squeezed from the cockpit altogether. The dynamic has become inevitable. There will still be accidents, but at some point we will have only the machines to blame."

It makes me ask, "Why is Wash flying Serenity on manual? Why haven't autopilots gotten good enough in 500 years to handle everything from liftoff to landing?"

"Airline pilots were once the heroes of the skies. Today, in the quest for safety, airplanes are meant to largely fly themselves.

This is an erroneous premise which leads to disastrous conclusions. It is not a real quest for safety, it is a false quest for safety. The airlines prefer to blame the Pilots whenever the Pilots fail to survive a crash. While dead, it is very difficult for them to defend themselves, therefore they are usually found to be at fault. The airlines don't want to admit their failures and faults in their practices, procedures, and policies - so they like the Pilots to be blamed, albeit falsely.
This false sense of Pilot fault, or percentage frequency of pilot fault, is what this pretend "quest for safety" is based upon, more fallacy built upon a foundation of fallacy.

Quote:Which is why the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447, which killed 228 people, remains so perplexing and significant. William Langewiesche explores how a series of small errors turned a state-of-the-art cockpit into a death trap."

And the final summation:

"It seems that we are locked into a spiral in which poor human performance begets automation, which worsens human performance, which begets increasing automation. The pattern is common to our time but is acute in aviation. Air France 447 was a case in point. In the aftermath of the accident, the pitot tubes were replaced on several Airbus models; Air France commissioned an independent safety review that highlighted the arrogance of some of the company’s pilots and suggested reforms; a number of experts called for angle-of-attack indicators in airliners, while others urged a new emphasis on high-altitude-stall training, upset recoveries, unusual attitudes, flying in Alternate Law, and basic aeronautical common sense. All of this was fine, but none of it will make much difference. At a time when accidents are extremely rare, each one becomes a one-off event, unlikely to be repeated in detail. Next time it will be some other airline, some other culture, and some other failure—but it will almost certainly involve automation and will perplex us when it occurs. Over time the automation will expand to handle in-flight failures and emergencies, and as the safety record improves, pilots will gradually be squeezed from the cockpit altogether. The dynamic has become inevitable. There will still be accidents, but at some point we will have only the machines to blame."

It makes me ask, "Why is Wash flying Serenity on manual? Why haven't autopilots gotten good enough in 500 years to handle everything from liftoff to landing?"

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

This is an erroneous premise which leads to disastrous conclusions. It is not a real quest for safety, it is a false quest for safety. The airlines prefer to blame the Pilots whenever the Pilots fail to survive a crash. While dead, it is very difficult for them to defend themselves, therefore they are usually found to be at fault. The airlines don't want to admit their failures and faults in their practices, procedures, and policies - so they like the Pilots to be blamed, albeit falsely.
This false sense of Pilot fault, or percentage frequency of pilot fault, is what this pretend "quest for safety" is based upon, more fallacy built upon a foundation of fallacy.

JewelStaiteFan, you misunderstood what happened on that fatal flight.

On the night of May 31, 2009, the pilots of Flight 447 did not serve their passengers well.

Unbeknownst to the pilots, ice crystals began to accumulate inside the airplane’s three air-pressure probes, known as pitot tubes, which were mounted on the underside of the nose. The clogging of that particular probe design was a known issue on certain Airbus models, and Air France had decided to replace the probes with ones of an improved design and had sent out an advisory to warn pilots of the problem. The first of the replacement probes had just arrived in Paris and were waiting in a storeroom to be installed.

For Flight 447, it was too late: the probes were quickly clogged. Just after 11:10 P.M., as a result of the blockage, all three of the cockpit’s airspeed indications failed, dropping to impossibly low values. Also as a result of the blockage, the indications of altitude blipped down by an unimportant 360 feet.

So here is the picture at that moment: the airplane was in steady-state cruise, pointing straight ahead without pitching up or down, and with the power set perfectly to deliver a tranquil .80 Mach. The turbulence was so light that one could have walked the aisles—though perhaps a bit unsteadily. Aside from a minor blip in altitude indication, the only significant failure was the indication of airspeed—but the airspeed itself was unaffected. No crisis existed. The episode should have been a non-event, and one that would not last long. The airplane was in the control of the pilots, and if they had done nothing, they would have done all they needed to do.

But the pilot pulled the stick back. Initially this may have been a startle response to the false indication of a minor altitude loss. But Bonin didn’t just ease the stick back—he hauled it back, three-fourths of the way to the stop, and then he kept on pulling. Alain Bouillard, the French investigator, equated the reaction to curling instinctively into a fetal position. The airplane responded by pitching up into an unsustainable climb, causing its speed to slow and its angle of attack to increase.

Six seconds after Bonin assumed control, with the C-chord altitude alert chiming in the cockpit, a brief stall warning sounded. It was a loud synthetic male voice. It said STALL one time. Robert said, “What was that?” The airplane answered, STALL STALL, and again the C-chord sounded. Neither pilot grasped the message.

A renowned cockpit designer at Boeing—himself a transport pilot—once said, “We don’t believe there are any bad pilots. We believe there are average pilots who have bad days.”

Even to the end, the pilots never understood the warning messages or how to recover from the stall. Just before the crash, the alarms were sounding PULL UP, STALL, PULL UP.

The pilot's famous last words recorded a second before Flight 447 pancaked into the Atlantic Ocean were, “Fuck, we’re dead.”

This is an erroneous premise which leads to disastrous conclusions. It is not a real quest for safety, it is a false quest for safety. The airlines prefer to blame the Pilots whenever the Pilots fail to survive a crash. While dead, it is very difficult for them to defend themselves, therefore they are usually found to be at fault. The airlines don't want to admit their failures and faults in their practices, procedures, and policies - so they like the Pilots to be blamed, albeit falsely.
This false sense of Pilot fault, or percentage frequency of pilot fault, is what this pretend "quest for safety" is based upon, more fallacy built upon a foundation of fallacy.

JewelStaiteFan, you misunderstood what happened on that fatal flight.

On the night of May 31, 2009, the pilots of Flight 447 did not serve their passengers well.

Unbeknownst to the pilots, ice crystals began to accumulate inside the airplane’s three air-pressure probes, known as pitot tubes, which were mounted on the underside of the nose. The clogging of that particular probe design was a known issue on certain Airbus models, and Air France had decided to replace the probes with ones of an improved design and had sent out an advisory to warn pilots of the problem. The first of the replacement probes had just arrived in Paris and were waiting in a storeroom to be installed.

For Flight 447, it was too late: the probes were quickly clogged. Just after 11:10 P.M., as a result of the blockage, all three of the cockpit’s airspeed indications failed, dropping to impossibly low values. Also as a result of the blockage, the indications of altitude blipped down by an unimportant 360 feet.

So here is the picture at that moment: the airplane was in steady-state cruise, pointing straight ahead without pitching up or down, and with the power set perfectly to deliver a tranquil .80 Mach. The turbulence was so light that one could have walked the aisles—though perhaps a bit unsteadily. Aside from a minor blip in altitude indication, the only significant failure was the indication of airspeed—but the airspeed itself was unaffected. No crisis existed. The episode should have been a non-event, and one that would not last long. The airplane was in the control of the pilots, and if they had done nothing, they would have done all they needed to do.

But the pilot pulled the stick back. Initially this may have been a startle response to the false indication of a minor altitude loss. But Bonin didn’t just ease the stick back—he hauled it back, three-fourths of the way to the stop, and then he kept on pulling. Alain Bouillard, the French investigator, equated the reaction to curling instinctively into a fetal position. The airplane responded by pitching up into an unsustainable climb, causing its speed to slow and its angle of attack to increase.

Six seconds after Bonin assumed control, with the C-chord altitude alert chiming in the cockpit, a brief stall warning sounded. It was a loud synthetic male voice. It said STALL one time. Robert said, “What was that?” The airplane answered, STALL STALL, and again the C-chord sounded. Neither pilot grasped the message.

A renowned cockpit designer at Boeing—himself a transport pilot—once said, “We don’t believe there are any bad pilots. We believe there are average pilots who have bad days.”

Even to the end, the pilots never understood the warning messages or how to recover from the stall. Just before the crash, the alarms were sounding PULL UP, STALL, PULL UP.

The pilot's famous last words recorded a second before Flight 447 pancaked into the Atlantic Ocean were, “Fuck, we’re dead.”

You have failed to grasp the relevance. I have forgotten - did you say you were in the Air Wing?

The Airline policies and practices that placed the needed and critical pitot tubes (yes, pitot tubes or ports are part of the MEL, and the bird is not allowed to Take Off if they are not working) in a warehouse instead of installed were the exact types of bureaucratic practices which killed these souls and which I was referring to.
I was already familiar with the summary of the Flight Data Recorder, Cockpit Data Recorder, Cockpit Voice Recorder, and investigation results. I did not post anything contrary to these.
FYI, STALL and PULL UP are contrary messages. And STALL in a synthetic and unrecognizable form is very poor design.
You mention the angle of attack increased. Was there not discussion that and AoA Indicator or Gauge should be ADDED to the cockpits, implying they were not currently present?
Pitot Tube clogging is not any new or unheard of problem. It has been common in aviation history. But when other indicators are removed due to budget cutting constraints, these errors become magnified and more critical.

This was an A330, which I have not worked on. I have only worked on the A300s and A320 from Airbus to date. So some details of the cockpit configuration I won't recall. For those who have heard the moniker "Scarebus" this is only due to the difficulty of getting parts in timely fashion for these birds. I have always found the Airbus designs to be the most safe in terms of redundancy. If an MD or Boeing had one redundant backup, Airbus had 2. If MD or Boeing had 2 or 3, Airbus had 5. I'm not kidding here - they really did.

You have posted details of the crash investigation. As a note for casual readers, it should be shared that in the first decades of air travel, disater, and investigation, the critical time frame the investigators used as countdown and focused on were the time of impact backwards to the "Oh Shit" moment - the point where the Pilot verbally exclaimed a major problem had developed or occurred. Since the development of Fly-by-wire, this "Oh Shit" moment has not applied to the Fly-by-wire design disasters - it has been replaced by the "What Is It Doing Now" moment. Keep that in mind - the Pilot of your Airplane does not know what the computer which is flying the plane is doing. If you think of your computer crashing or freezing, or locking up, you understand what the Pilot is dealing with - and what insanity it is for aircraft designers to use Micro$haft software to build their flight control applications upon.

OK, so it was on PBS last night, and I caught parts of it.
There are plenty of spoiler possibilities, so I will try to avoid them.
I really want to see the whole thing now, even though I have spoiled parts of it for myself.
It is largely what I had conjured it to be, but also has a big portion of mystery as well. When I watch it, I must look if the mystery part had a lot of foreshadowing during the film.
For Aviation films, I am thinking it alongside Fate Is The Hunter, with Glenn Ford, Rod Taylor, Suzanne Pleshette ("introducing" her). But Fate does not have a similar background mystery as bonus.

For those who see the film, it makes some fairly clear statements about the cause of the catastrophic loss of control, and makes clear that the diatribe posted above by second is laughable, turning it to mincemeat.

Reportedly one of the simulation test pilots portrayed in the film is actually a real life simulator test pilot, and also the film production was gifted an actual simulator for filming and technical accuracy.

The writer/producer and also the Actor/producer Richard Reihle are apparently currently working together on another film, with a deeper subject - something having to do with the Pulse shooting in Orlando.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4998885/?ref_=tt_ov_wr

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

You have failed to grasp the relevance. I have forgotten - did you say you were in the Air Wing?

I'm going demystify it for you, so you know who crashed and killed flight 447:

The Air France 447 transcripts yield information that may ensure that no airline pilot will ever again make the same mistakes. From now on, every airline pilot will no doubt think immediately of AF447 the instant a stall-warning alarm sounds at cruise altitude. Airlines around the world will change their training programs to enforce habits that might have saved the doomed airliner: paying closer attention to the weather and to what the planes around you are doing; explicitly clarifying who's in charge when two co-pilots are alone in the cockpit; understanding the parameters of alternate law; and practicing hand-flying the airplane during all phases of flight.

Just yesterday I noticed a youtuber that does informative recreations using a flight simulator recently uploaded a video about this very flight. Often he pipes in cockpit audio, too. This one looks a little "off" - I guess because it is night. But check out his other videos. This one is very strange - like the pilots were high or something.

Quote:Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
This is an erroneous premise which leads to disastrous conclusions. It is not a real quest for safety, it is a false quest for safety. The airlines prefer to blame the Pilots whenever the Pilots fail to survive a crash. While dead, it is very difficult for them to defend themselves, therefore they are usually found to be at fault. The airlines don't want to admit their failures and faults in their practices, procedures, and policies - so they like the Pilots to be blamed, albeit falsely.
This false sense of Pilot fault, or percentage frequency of pilot fault, is what this pretend "quest for safety" is based upon, more fallacy built upon a foundation of fallacy.

JewelStaiteFan, you misunderstood what happened on that fatal flight.

On the night of May 31, 2009, the pilots of Flight 447 did not serve their passengers well.

Unbeknownst to the pilots, ice crystals began to accumulate inside the airplane’s three air-pressure probes, known as pitot tubes, which were mounted on the underside of the nose. The clogging of that particular probe design was a known issue on certain Airbus models, and Air France had decided to replace the probes with ones of an improved design and had sent out an advisory to warn pilots of the problem. The first of the replacement probes had just arrived in Paris and were waiting in a storeroom to be installed.

For Flight 447, it was too late: the probes were quickly clogged. Just after 11:10 P.M., as a result of the blockage, all three of the cockpit’s airspeed indications failed, dropping to impossibly low values. Also as a result of the blockage, the indications of altitude blipped down by an unimportant 360 feet.

So here is the picture at that moment: the airplane was in steady-state cruise, pointing straight ahead without pitching up or down, and with the power set perfectly to deliver a tranquil .80 Mach. The turbulence was so light that one could have walked the aisles—though perhaps a bit unsteadily. Aside from a minor blip in altitude indication, the only significant failure was the indication of airspeed—but the airspeed itself was unaffected. No crisis existed. The episode should have been a non-event, and one that would not last long. The airplane was in the control of the pilots, and if they had done nothing, they would have done all they needed to do.

This paragraph indicates you gave no clue of the concept of INSTRUMENT FLIGHT RULES, or the absolute requirement that the Pilots trust, depend, and believe the Instruments and Indicators. Keeping the newer, better, safer, correct parts stuck in a parts warehouse while the plane takes off with passengers on board is an action severely undermining the system of dependence upon the Instruments.
It is a bureaucratic and beancounting practice taking priority over Safety.
And having the Angle of Attack Indicator removed from the cockpit Instrument cluster is also subjugating Safety.
None of these Reductions in Safe Practices are under control of any Pilots. All of them are the purview of the bureaucratic Practices and Policies of the Corporate level.

Quote:But the pilot pulled the stick back. Initially this may have been a startle response to the false indication of a minor altitude loss. But Bonin didn’t just ease the stick back—he hauled it back, three-fourths of the way to the stop, and then he kept on pulling. Alain Bouillard, the French investigator, equated the reaction to curling instinctively into a fetal position. The airplane responded by pitching up into an unsustainable climb, causing its speed to slow and its angle of attack to increase.

Six seconds after Bonin assumed control, with the C-chord altitude alert chiming in the cockpit, a brief stall warning sounded. It was a loud synthetic male voice. It said STALL one time. Robert said, “What was that?” The airplane answered, STALL STALL, and again the C-chord sounded. Neither pilot grasped the message.

A renowned cockpit designer at Boeing—himself a transport pilot—once said, “We don’t believe there are any bad pilots. We believe there are average pilots who have bad days.”

Even to the end, the pilots never understood the warning messages or how to recover from the stall. Just before the crash, the alarms were sounding PULL UP, STALL, PULL UP.

The pilot's famous last words recorded a second before Flight 447 pancaked into the Atlantic Ocean were, “Fuck, we’re dead.”

And you had also previously mentioned Autopilots control from Takeoffs and Landings. Before the 1980s Autopilots had the capability to handle the entire flight from Takeoff to Landing. The different Categories of Autopilot State defined how much the capability was allowed for use. IIRC one category was the complete range, another was only from ascending above 100 feet (of terrain clearance) until descending to the last 100 feet. Another category was 200 up to 200 down, and another was 400 to 400 feet. The Category limit selected on the Autopilot Computer (not accessible from the cockpit, only the Avionics Bay) was regulated and specified by FAA.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

I did neglect to finish commenting on this post.

This is an erroneous premise which leads to disastrous conclusions.

This paragraph indicates you gave no clue etc., etc.

In the USA there were 37,461 traffic fatalities in 2016. Pilot Error was blamed for most of those deaths. There is a believable claim for a much lower number (but not zero) of Pilot Error deaths from self-driving trucks, buses, and cars. It is uncertain the American public will ever accept self-driving autos. But if the public finally does accepts self-driving road vehicles, airplanes will be next, ending human Pilot Error in flight.

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